Mainstream Linux

Robin examines the ever-increasing presence of Linux in theserver, workstation and desktop markets.

Linus Torvalds says in his entertaining
autobiography Just for Fun that when he
started being asked if he thought Linux would someday take over the
desktop and make a dent in Microsoft, he invariably replied that it
would. That prediction hasn't come true yet, but there's growing
reason to think it may. For insight into the growing Linux client
OS business we'll talk with IBM, HP, Compaq, Dell, Gateway and SGI.

Linux first succeeded as a server platform running Apache, so
much so that IDC reports that last year 27% of server operating
systems sold were Linux, compared to 41% for Windows. But, last
year Windows scored 91% of the desktop OS market, with Linux just
at 1.4%. Apple continued its slide to 3.6%. Only Windows and Linux
are showing growth as desktop operating systems: Windows up by 11%,
Linux up by 25%. However, IDC is collecting new numbers to take
into account the many free copies of Linux being installed and to
count pirated copies of Windows, not just copies sold of each OS.
IDC analyst Al Gillen notes, “The most common hardware for Linux
systems is a recycled Windows PC.”

As a free operating system it may seem odd that today Linux
is a greater commercial force in high-end workstations than in
desktop PCs. Linux is migrating down from servers, not up from
entry-level PCs. Reasons for this include Linux compatibility with
other UNIX operating systems that dominate high-end platforms and
the barrier of growing a new support infrastructure rather than
using the established one for Windows. Note that you won't see any
OEM dual-boot Windows/Linux systems because that is precluded by
Microsoft's secret licensing terms with vendors, a point that the
government failed to make in the antitrust case.

All the top PC manufacturers now offer Linux. Not long ago
you needed to specify a secret Linux web page, but now you usually
can drill down into Linux offerings from their home page. To jump
straight to Linux see
www.ibm.com/linux,
www.hp.com/linux,
www.compaq.com/linux
or
www.dell.com/linux.
Let's take a look at what the leading PC vendors are offering with
Linux.

IBM's PC line includes IntelliStation workstations, NetVista
desktops and ThinkPad laptops. The desktop NetVista N2200l comes
with Turbolinux. ThinkPad Series A and Series T are available with
OpenLinux eDesktop 2.4. The ThinkPad T22 is the first Linux
computer ever to ship a licensed software DVD player, the
InterVideo LinDVD. Linux open-source DVD players are avoided by
manufacturers due to the infamous DeCSS lawsuit. Most DVD movies
are copy protected, and the US DMCA law prohibits software capable
of removing copy protection.

“Workstation users are switching to Linux because it is
fast, simple and reliable”, says IntelliStation workstation
director of marketing Doug Oathout. Although Linux is displacing
Windows on servers, he hasn't seen it making much impact on Windows
workstations; instead Linux is displacing other flavors of UNIX.
Many flavors of Linux are supported. “We test Caldera, SuSE,
Turbolinux and Red Hat on all models of IntelliStation”, says
Oathout. “A lot of that testing involves graphics cards. ATI,
NVIDIA and Matrox have Linux drivers, but 3Dlabs currently does
not. We're working on that.” A significant part of IBM's
one-billion-dollar commitment to Linux goes into testing and driver
development.

“The IBM workstation market is strong for electronic design,
and geoscience is coming on strong”, says Oathout. Having products
available for Linux from EDA (electronic design automation)
industry leaders such as Cadence and Mentor are encouraging users
to switch from HP-UX (HP's UNIX) and Solaris to Linux. In the
financial sector, IBM is seeing a mixed environment of Linux and
Windows. Linux desktop applications for trading are available, but
Reuters and Bloomberg access requires Windows. Popular Linux
movie-making tools include Maya, LightWave and Softimage. The
primary Linux CAD applications are ANSYS, Nastran and Patran, all
for finite element analysis. “Oil and gas applications are up and
coming”, says Oathout. “They will be converting over to Linux
next year.”

CATIA is a Windows-based CAD system sold by IBM and developed
in France by Dassault Systèmes. “CATIA V5 runs successfully
on Linux”, says media relations spokesman Anthony Marechal. “From
a marketing standpoint, we have made no decision so far but remain
open to support CATIA running on Linux if the market pressure
increases.”

Hewlett-Packard announced in September 2001 that it would
acquire Compaq for $25 billion sometime in 2002. After the merger,
the new company, with a combined revenue of $87 billion (HP $47
billion, Compaq $40 billion), will be close in market size to the
$90 billion of IBM. Together HP and Compaq account for 75% of
retail PC sales in US stores.

“We've been shipping Linux 3-D high-end workstations for
about a year and a half”, says director of marketing Mike Balma.
“Linux for digital content creation, Hollywood, is really showing
growth thanks to support of industry standard applications like
Maya, Houdini and Shake. In fact, Maya is only certified for Linux
on HP workstations.” HP worked closely with DreamWorks in the
Linux transition there (see this column in the August 2001 issue of
Linux Journal). The HP workstation market is
expanding in EDA, software development in telecommunications and
large-screen financial trader applications. HP workstation buyers
seem to be mainly former Solaris customers. As at IBM, Linux
doesn't seem to be impacting the Windows workstation market
yet.

All HP workstations are certified by Linuxcare for
Turbolinux, SuSE, Red Hat, Caldera, Mandrake and Debian. Linuxcare
CEO Arthur Tyde explains, “We do a thorough QA on each distro and
an in-depth analysis of kernel performance against system devices
such as IDE.” Instructions for overcoming installation obstacles
on a per-model basis for HP, Compaq, IBM and Dell are on-line at
www.linuxcare.com/labs/certs.

While Linux is available standard on HP workstations
everywhere, Linux desktops and laptops are a special order except
in Asia and Europe. “Eastern Europe is more open to Linux as a
desktop”, says Balma. “They don't have the installed base of
Windows and are more sensitive to price.” Because of Winmodem
issues, HP Pavilion home desktops and laptops don't fully support
Linux, but that is being worked on.

Former Debian Project Leader Bruce Perens joined HP as Linux
strategist in December 2000. HP is making many of their drivers,
particularly those for printers, open source. Open-source GNOME has
been made the standard desktop for HP-UX. GNOME was independently
adopted by HP and Sun at about the same time. HP denies they are
offering their own Linux distro. “Some mistook our
security-enhanced version of Red Hat for a distro, but it is really
just a matter of bundling security with an existing OS”, says
Balma.

Compaq Linux Program Manager Judy Chavis says, “I've been
involved with Linux at Compaq for three years.” Compaq certifies
with Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera and Turbolinux. “We don't see a lot of
Linux desktop demand, but for workstations there is a lot of demand
in EDA”, says Chavis. “Workstations are just starting to ramp up
in the last six months, not much activity before that.” EDA, oil
and gas, and digital content creation are the basis of Compaq's
Linux workstation market. Linux is certified and shipped
pre-installed on workstations but is not offered on Compaq desktops
and laptops.

Magma Blast Chip Screenshot

Avanti Jupiter View of a Floorplan Flyline
Analysis

EDA chip design software maker Magma Design Automation made
their Blast Chip and Blast Fusion products available for Linux in
May 2001. “Over the past year we have seen an increasing demand to
deliver our products for the Linux OS”, says VP of Marketing and
Business Development Bob Smith. Avanti, another leading EDA vendor,
is preparing to offer an end-to-end chip design system for Linux in
Q4. “In response to customer input, many Avanti products have
already been ported to Linux over the past couple of years”, says
Chief Operating Officer Dr. Paul Lo.

Dell Computer, currently number four in the market with $33
billion in revenue, will become number three after the HP/Compaq
merger. With 28% of the world market going to the Dell Precision
line, Dell is the number one workstation provider. Before adding
Linux in late 1999, Dell workstations were Windows-only, although
Novell NetWare and SCO UnixWare were available on servers. “We are
seeing significant interest from the motion picture market”, says
spokesman David Graves. Dell recently dropped US support for Linux
consumer PCs, an offering that was on their web site but never
widely promoted. “We're a customer-demand-driven company”, says
Graves. “For corporate customers wanting custom factory
integration of 50 or more units, we'll still burn their Linux disk
image on OptiPlex desktops and Latitude laptops.” Dell has also
stopped offering Linux to consumers in Australia.

Gateway, a PC maker with nine billion dollars in revenue,
announced in August 2001 it is pulling back from global markets
outside the US and may lay off 25% of its workforce. In an effort
to improve customer service, Gateway announced in February 2001
that it was reducing the 23 million potential combinations of
computers it sells to hundreds of configurations. “We don't offer
Linux as a standard configuration”, says spokeswoman Lisa Emard,
“but do provide it to larger customers as needed through our
custom integration group.” Gateway cites insufficient demand to
support Linux at retail.

SGI was the uncontested market leader for servers and
workstations combining high performance with advanced graphics.
SGI, with $1.5 billion in revenue, is now down to 11% of the market
for such systems, mainly due to a market shift to Windows
workstations. Linux is part of the SGI strategy to recover from an
unrewarding diversification into Windows workstations and Cray
supercomputers. Although SGI bought and later sold Cray,
supercomputing remains a core business with the release of the
Origin3000 in 2000, Origin2000 in 1996 and Challenge in
1993.

“Linux is very exciting to us”, says SGI Advanced Graphics
Product Line Manager Simon Hayhurst. “Our goal is to get O2 and
Octane capabilities onto lower-priced Intel machines. The PC has a
lot of legacy issues. We're making high-performance IRIX components
like XFS, OpenGL and Open Inventor available as open source in
Linux.” As standard definition television is becoming viable on
PCs, SGI is looking to HDTV as an emerging market where extra
performance is needed. “We capture some piece of the high end from
business generated by Dell”, says Hayhurst. “Low end always
drives the high end.” SGI doesn't offer desktops or
laptops.

MicroTron2000 offers the lowest-priced desktops we could find
looking in the local (San Diego, California) computer rag,
ComputorEdge. While bottom-of-the-line PC
prices at the majors ranged from a low of $659 US at Dell to $799
US at Gateway, a complete MicroTron2000 PC starts at $418 US for an
AMD Duron 750 ($239 US including 256MB P133, 10GB HD, CD-ROM,
modem, 100BASE-TX) and 17" ViewSonic E70 monitor ($179 US). One
thing not included in that price is any Microsoft software. That's
$95 US extra for Win98, $139 US for Win2K and no Microsoft Office
at all. Manager Charles Tran says, “We would like to include Linux
as a free operating system but haven't been able to find a Linux
expert to join our staff. We are looking to support Red
Hat.”

As PC prices continue to drop, Microsoft software becomes the
single most expensive component. There's an unmet opportunity in
the low-end market to create a useful PC without Windows.

The World Bank estimates that of the planet's six billion
people, more than 1.2 billion live on less than one dollar a day
(mostly in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa). Two billion more
people are only marginally better off. Proportionately, few people
in the world have a PC. The US has 285 million people but
constitutes 102 million of the 236 million people active on the
Internet. Total PC shipments worldwide this year are expected to be
130 million units. With an annual world population growth of 75
million and a PC obsolescent cycle of just a few years, progress is
very slow toward everyone having a PC. Windows is only taking the
low-hanging fruit. A 37% price break, saving $241 US per PC, does
make a difference in most of the world.

Mexico City is undergoing a two-year transition to
open-source software, already in use at the department of motor
vehicles. GNOME evangelist Miguel de Icaza, a former system
administrator at a Mexico City university, made a personal appeal
to President Fox to consider open source for Mexico's broad eMexico
computer initiative. Government initiatives to employ open source
are underway in Brazil, France, Germany, South Korea and
China.

For the desktop, Microsoft Office has become the dam holding
back a Linux flood. A significant alternative to Microsoft Office
is StarOffice. Sun Microsystems spent $74 million acquiring
StarOffice as a product to give away for free, then further
confounded business analysts by announcing last year that it would
make version 6.0 GPL, open sourcing nine million lines of code. Due
for release in October 2001, OpenOffice 6.0 should be available by
the time you read this. Anticipated enhancements include making the
annoying integrated desktop feature optional, improved
compatibility with Microsoft Office file formats and support for
Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

Screenshot of Beta OpenOffice 6.0

In June 2001, Sun announced a US military commitment to
StarOffice by DISA (Defense Information Systems Agency), the agency
responsible for IT systems for the Pentagon and 600 other military
organizations worldwide. StarOffice isn't displacing Microsoft,
rather 10,000 UNIX copies of desktop suite Applix. Microsoft wasn't
a contender for lack of Solaris support. StarOffice runs on Linux,
Windows and Solaris. DISA anticipates deploying as many as 25,000
copies. Being free, StarOffice didn't net any revenue to Sun
directly on the deal, but DISA has extensive support contracts with
Sun.

An issue with government users is that Linux hasn't been
certified as secure for military/government use (nor for that
matter is Windows XP—only Windows NT 3.51). However, the NSA
(National Security Agency) has developed a version of Linux called
SELinux to push the state of the art in OS security. NSA, DARPA and
other US agencies are funding open-source projects for millions of
dollars.

With the release of Windows XP, Microsoft says it has finally
put the Windows DOS legacy to rest. XP is based on 2K/NT, whose
design is closest to VMS. Windows 2000 was the first reliable
Windows OS but shares the annoying trait with Windows NT of pausing
for seconds from time to time to do system housekeeping. XP
introduces some new annoyances (or features), including dropping
support of Netscape plugins, not including Java by default (a
consequence of losing a lawsuit with Sun), special antipiracy
measures (requiring registration locking to a particular machine
signature), the .NET portal (or gatekeeper) and the usual upgrade
thrash of incompatibilities with existing third-party
applications.

Linux is established in the server market. It is storming the
workstation market. It has a beachhead in the government market.
The next barrier Linux must pass is the corporate desktop. No
Fortune 500 company today has a significant
Linux desktop deployment. But the increasing cost of Microsoft XP
and broadening support for Linux are making many companies pause to
consider. Ford Europe, with 33,000 desktops, has stated it is
looking hard at Linux.

Most Windows desktop users merely want a Windows 98 that
doesn't crash, that is not a moving target. In about one year Linux
has come from nowhere to be the OS of choice for the motion picture
industry. All the studios are converting to Linux, starting with
DreamWorks, which has already released the first hit movie created
primarily using Linux, Shrek. Now Linux is
surging into other workstation markets like EDA. Advances in niche
markets are strengthening Linux, improving its device driver and
graphics support. Each improvement is removing an obstacle to the
desktop. With broad industry support, Linux is unstoppable.

“Software is like sex: it's better when it's free”,
according to Linus.

Robin
Rowe (robin.rowe@movieeditor.com) is a partner in
MovieEditor.com, a technology company that creates internet and
broadcast video applications. He has written for
Dr. Dobb's Journal,
the C++ Report, the C/C++
Users Journal and Data Based
Advisor.